A Catastrophe in Slow Motion

Juneau did not get a disaster proclamation from the State of Alaska, contrary to the hopes of most folks here in Juneau, ourselves included.  That means the bill for repairs to the transmission line and for the diesel now used to provide over 80% of our electricity (there is still some hydro close to town) will be borne by each and every Juneau resident and business concern.  There is no panic nor any organized protest, yet.  For all the hype, the first bills should only now be appearing in mailboxes.  Our bill is still a week away.

And therein lies the first problem.  The new rates imposed by Alaska Electric Light and Power (AEL&P) apply to the entire month of April, whereas the avalanche occurred on the 16th.  Our meter was last read on the tenth, so we will be charged extra for the six days we didn’t know we were going to be charged draconian rates for the extra power.  AEL&P contends this is fair because we will be see relief sooner once the problem is resolved.  Of course, the rates are scheduled to come down in the middle of summer when electrical requirements are at their least anyway (very few buildings have air conditioning here).  Rate payers who get billed in the last half of the month also have the benefit of knowing they need to conserve and have the opportunity to do something about it.

There are other problems too.  The design of the original installation has been called into question, but the quick fix being pursued by the power company is to put up nearly identical towers on the same pads where the last towers were taken out by the avalanche.  No alternative repairs have been seriously mentioned, such as laying the whole wire underwater (it is said to be too expensive, but nobody has mentioned a price).  A lovely illustration of a concrete deflector (used in British Columbia and some western U.S. states without a single failure) showed up in today’s paper, but it wasn’t put in there by our power company.  Instead, AEL&P has committed to nothing more than the immediate repairs and “long term study” to investigate possible solutions.

My [Michael] darker (and realistic) side suspects there will be several class-action lawsuits that derive from this whole fiasco.  We may be a party in at least one of them.

Some good does come of our avalanche situation.  Citywide electric usage is down by 30% as residents and businesses tone down their lights, and will likely come down further.  Energy conservation is in vogue again in a big way.  There is even some prospect that this will give our city a cause to unite behind, improving our sense of community and maybe even improving life in our town.

But much of this lies in the future.

I went to work on my insulation project the same day my picture appeared on the front page of The Juneau Empire (pictured above, me posing with my insulation stacked in the garage).

I was quoted in the article too:

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/042008/loc_270393062.shtml

Our cathedral ceiling, which accounts for about a third of our total ceiling area, was poorly insulated (like the rest of the house).  The four inches of foam now installed (two layers of two inch) should effectively triple the ceiling insulation in that part of the house.  We hated to lose the wood look of the original ceiling, and I tried to remove the cedar that was up there for reuse, but the pieces were sporadically glued and many of them came down in splinters when I tried to dislodge them, so the wood stayed.  We can always put up new wood later.

The biggest irony about our situation is that we used wood through the winter to supplement our heat, and I was burning the last sticks of dry wood the same day the avalanche struck.  Had we known I could have set some wood aside.

But all was not lost.  I save leftover wood from every construction project I tackle, including scraps, partly because I hate to throw anything away, but also because I think I’ll find a use for the wood in some future project.  Thus was born the “home heat” project.  For over two weeks we’ve heated our home almost exclusively with scrap lumber from the garage.  It works quite well, in fact it is the driest wood our woodstove has ever burned, having spent months or years (back to 2001) out of the weather.  Between the wood and the newly upgraded insulation, we’ve been able to keep all of the electric heaters off for the past two weeks, dropping our electric usage by over half versus the month before the avalanche, and about a quarter of what it was before the woodstove was installed (best estimate, accounting for lighting/heating requirements and outside temperatures).

I always knew I’d find a good use for that wood.

Unfortunately, we’ll be running out of scraps in another week at the rate we’re going.  Still, there are some pallets to be had around town (about a day’s worth of heat per pallet if the last two I found are any indication).  My next door neighbor also said he’s had some wood rounds for a long time but no splitter for them, so we tentatively agreed to have me come over with my splitter in exchange for some of the split wood.

I recall that Sheryl was somewhat taken aback by the price quoted for our woodstove when we had it put in.  It appears now that, if we can keep throwing wood in it, we’ll make up for the expense much quicker than in the original estimation.  And still we wait for our first bill at the new rate.

We’re lucky: Sheryl and I have enough set aside to pay our electric bills through this crisis.  Not only that, but we’ll continue with our home renovations pretty much per plan, since our renovations are largely to improve the house’s energy efficiency anyway.  We’ll still be driving to Fairbanks for Dorothy’s wedding too, although our plans for a larger trip down south had to be set aside (which was becoming tenuous even before our avalanche due to the price of gasoline).  We are acting proactively, I hope, rather than reactively.

I suspect the reactive responses to Juneau’s energy crisis (and it truly is a crisis) will begin within the next week, and will escalate with every electric bill delivered to the doors of an evermore distraught citizenry.  I also suspect that much of the town is still in denial over just how bad this really is, and won’t truly appreciate it until the bills are opened.  There are also a lot of people who simply don’t know how to cut back, people who are in many cases the same people who won’t have a contingency for this kind of emergency.  The same thing can be said about many area businesses.

But this is a catastrophe in slow motion.  It began over two weeks ago.  It will continue through the summer.

The kids, by the way, have been largely unaffected by all this.  They thought the ceiling insulation project was interesting enough, and they are a little more willing to wear sweaters in the house now. 

Bitter Irony

An excerpt from today's Juneau Empire (online):

Electricity bills likely to increase by 500 percent following avalanche
Story last updated at 4/16/2008 - 4:02 pm

Juneau’s electricity rates are likely to quintuple as the result of an avalanche early this morning that cut all hydroelectric power to the area, according to an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman.
Juneau is now running on diesel generators at Auke Bay and Lemon Creek, said Gayle Wood, director of consumer affairs.
One transmission tower is down and four damaged on the Snettisham line, which connects hydroelectric power from the Snettisham lakes to the service area.
Outages were limited to the Thane area this morning because the power load transferred to the diesel generators that were already running.
Wood said it would be two to three weeks before workers could safely begin repairing the line, and that hydro power wouldn’t be restored for at least three months.
For more, see Thursday’s Empire.

We’re having a wet spring.  This is really not too unusual for us because every spring is a wet spring, although it is somewhat unusual that the sun hasn’t been out at least a little.  This is, after all, the “dry season” for us.

We are also enjoying (if that’s the word) an earlier spring than last year.  The snow is melting, the creeks are flowing, and the blueberry bushes are emerging from their winter slumber.  When it hasn’t been raining, and even when it is, we’ve been out in the yard with the big clippers, electric chain saw, rake, and shovel, clearing dead trees and clipping low branches, raking sticks and twigs out of the moss, clearing out creek drainages, and generally having fun on our one acre park and preserve.

We often feel like our yard is a park.  It has many of the things that parks offer: forests and meadows, creeks and ponds, plants and animals, paths and trails, birds and mosquitoes.  We’re even going to have a playground!

The rockwork I [Michael] put in last year survived the winter without incident, which doesn’t really surprise me but does give me a little more confidence in planning the stone arch bridges I want to put in.  We’re also going to expand the trail system by running a strip of rock and gravel along the east side of West creek (for the sake of simplicity we refer to our two creeks as East creek and West creek).  Both of our creeks have some marshy stretches but West creek is the worst, and the most logical place (we’ve concluded) for a trail is right along the marsh, hence the plans for more rockwork.

Apart from expansion of the West creek trail, we’re really reticent about putting in too many improved trails on the property.  In some cases, like the marshes along the creeks and on a couple of steeper climbs, an improved trail makes sense to ease our passage and avoid damage to the terrain.  Everywhere else, it makes little sense to put in trails because the forest floor is mostly open, the moss is fairly tolerant with light foot traffic, and an unaltered landscape looks really nice.  Even now, we can wander pretty much at will almost everywhere in the yard.

The kids are fairly good about staying close by us when we’re out, so much so that we’re planning to take down the chain link fence that separates the back lawn (if a mostly level patch of moss can be called a lawn) from the rest of the yard.  The benefit is that the kids will have a larger area to wander in (the rule is “stay where I can see you”), but there’s a drawback too: the bears will have easier access to the back deck.

Becky and Michael are both doing really well.  They’re both talking more and more, and more fluently.  They talk to each other.  They talk to us.  Last night Michael had a nice talk with his mom on the phone.  I believe they are approaching parity in their verbal abilities, which I’ve been anticipating for several months, but Michael is only starting to sort out colors, shapes, letters, and numbers, and Becky has already learned a lot of this.

When Becky turns six she’ll get re-evaluated for autism.  I’m under the impression that she will lose the autism classification then, which will make a difference on what degree of assistance she’ll get from outside services.  She qualified for the preschool program because of her autistic side, and we also get weekly visits from a speech pathologist, but preschool is winding down for her and she probably won’t need the speech therapy in another year, so if she doesn’t qualify in the future I think she’ll still do just fine.

We’re still contemplating plans for the summer.  Seattle is out.  Chances are we won’t drive south at all, contenting ourselves with the drive up to Fairbanks, Wasilla, and other points north.  We haven’t ruled having one or two of us fly to Illinois though, but the airlines aren’t advertising any specials that fly on the dates we’re looking at so it’s too early to tell what may happen.

And today is the third Wednesday of the month.  Time for my monthly newspaper column.

I don’t chastise my children for leaving lights on in our house. They’re much too young to understand about energy use and conservation, and probably won’t come to appreciate these points for several years. But there’s another reason why I allow the lights to stay on. They heat the house.

Much of what passes for energy conservation is wrong-headed in a place like Juneau. The reason is simple: a watt is a watt, no matter how it’s used.

Electricity produces heat. To be precise, one watt of electricity produces approximately 3.414 Btu’s of heat per hour. This is apparently true regardless of how that watt is used. A thousand-watt electric resistance heater produces 3414 Btu’s of heat. A thirteen-watt compact florescent bulb produces just over 44 Btu’s. An 800-watt refrigerator throws off 2731 Btu’s.

Honest, well-intentioned people tell us to turn off lights and unused appliances to conserve electricity. What these people fail to tell us is that, in a climate where buildings require heat all through the year, there is no such thing as an unused watt. Every watt consumed indoors adds heat.

For every light or appliance that is not in use within a heated building, the heating system has to make up the difference. There is no net energy savings, merely a redistribution of how that heat is produced.

Our current home was built just before the oil embargo in the early seventies, an era when nobody gave much thought toward energy usage. There was no insulation under the floors when we moved in, no wrapping on the pipes for the baseboard heaters, and only two inches of fiberglass in the walls. Our home was, and is, an energy hog.

But our home is not quite the hog it used to be. When our oil-fired boiler quit working last spring we removed the entire heating system, pipes and all, and put in electric heat. We sealed all the holes in the floor –dozens of them – and installed insulation under the floors. We also installed a woodstove insert after realizing that the open fireplace drew more hot air out of the house than it radiated back in.

By comparing our power bills now versus a year ago, I’ve determined that we’ve cut our home energy requirements by about twenty-five percent. This doesn’t include the woodstove insert, the additional use of which cuts our winter electric usage substantially.

In truth, the time and effort involved in cutting, storing, and otherwise handling wood doesn’t save as much money as I could earn in most paying jobs, not yet anyway. Having said that, we have a lot of trees on our property, we have to do something with the wood that does come down, and I like the exercise. There’s also nothing quite like a warm fire to cozy up to when I’m chilled.

Between the insulation upgrades and the woodstove insert, our electric bill this winter was half of what we paid for oil and electricity the year before. We stayed just as warm too, even warmer when the insert was in use.

We’re planning several more upgrades. We’ll insulate the exterior walls. The cathedral ceiling above our living room will get extra insulation. Several of our windows will get swapped out with newer, more efficient models. We are also contemplating a geothermal heating system. All of these jobs will be huge, and expensive.

These upgrades will all reduce our energy requirements. The savings in our power bill will add up over time, and the improvements will add to the value of our house. Consider the alternative: if we don’t pay to reduce our energy requirements, we’ll continue to pay for the extra energy our home requires.

The cost of oil heat now exceeds the cost of heating with electricity, even after accounting for the surcharges imposed by AEL&P this winter. Since the price of oil is unlikely to go down, the home heating equation is likely to continue favoring electricity as long as Juneau continues getting the majority of its power through hydroelectric generation.

These little lights of mine, I’m gonna let ‘em shine. My kids like it that way. So do I. It keeps things bright and cheery, at no additional cost.

Wedding Update

M.J. just called to let us know that Dorothy's wedding is still on for June 21st, however, the venue has been moved from Seattle to Fairbanks!  We are just beginning to figure out the impact of this on the rest of the summer plans we were making.

Michael's monthly column was published in the Empire this morning:

At Home With the Kids

By Michael Wittig

 

Suggested headline:  Getting ready for Kindergarten

 

Our little girl will be going to Kindergarten next year. For most parents this is a significant event in their family’s history. In our household it is even more momentous: two years ago our daughter was diagnosed as autistic.

 

One year ago Kindergarten still seemed a virtually unachievable goal. Our daughter barely spoke even then, and she used a mumbled speech portrayed mostly by single words and a few carefully selected phrases. She looked at our faces only rarely, a common enough trait in autistic children, but very frustrating from the standpoint of trying to teach or interact in any meaningful way.

 

When the topic of Kindergarten came up in preschool conferences as recently as last autumn the conversation did not last long. At that time, we noted a steady increase in abilities and aptitudes, but we were months away from having to make a decision and our daughter was still performing far below Kindergarten level.

 

The Kindergarten decision came this month. Oddly enough, our daughter made the decision for us through a few of her actions on the very day of her latest parent teacher conference.

 

For months I have been feeding my daughter a script almost every time she wanted something, a sentence that reads like: “May I have some ____ (fill in the blank) please?” Until recently I always had to prompt her through at least some of the sentence, but on conference day she surprised me.

 

I was playing the piano in our living room that morning when I heard my daughter’s whining cry for milk coming from the kitchen. I called out to her, saying she would have to come and tell me what she wanted before I’d get it for her. Without another whimper she came into the living room and in a very polite voice asked: “Daddy, may I have some milk please?”

 

In the last few weeks it has become apparent that our daughter also knows the alphabet and numbers, not only recognizing them in print but also capable of drawing them. She demonstrated the connection between letters and words recently, pointing at a stop sign and saying, “Stop! S.T.O.P.” Getting into the car on the way to school she looked at the button on her car seat, then said, “P.U.S.H. Daddy, what’s that spell?”

 

At the school conference I offered an accounting of my daughter’s new skills. I also learned that she was doing new things at school, even offering up imaginative play compelling enough to entice her schoolmates to join in the fun. When the preschool teacher mentioned Kindergarten this time around we all agreed that she would be ready.

 

In the early days of my daughter’s autism there was a fear in my heart. The fear was that my children might need more time to get ready for the big wide world than we could give them, that my wife and I would either be caring and providing for our adult children well into our twilight years, or worse yet, that we might not live long enough to see our children safely through to independence.

 

As older parents, my wife and I keep a steady gaze on the window of time between our children’s coming into their own and the end of our working life. When our children were conceived we felt the window was narrow but acceptable. When autism reared its head it seemed that the window had slammed shut.

 

But daylight is showing through that window now. Our kids are growing and learning. The autistic toddler I knew has forgotten her aversion to looking at faces. She talks, and she asks questions.

 

Our little girl is going to Kindergarten. She’s going to enter it at the same time as her peers. It even appears that she’ll be on an academic par with her classmates at the starting gate.

 

There will be challenges ahead, and I am certain there will be more dark days and uncertainty in store for our daughter, just like there are for the rest of us. Life is seemingly difficult enough without complications like autism, but at least we know something of what she’s up against, and we can help her get through it.

 

Spring Break
Now Playing: Becky singing "Go, Diego, Go" over and over

It's hard to believe it's spring break already.  I (Sheryl) haven't stashed the the poinsettia in the garage, the Christmas wreath still hanging on the front door, the paper cutout snowflakes on the windows, nor the twinkle lights that adorn the beams in the living room that have provided a significant source of light this winter.  

Daylight savings time went into effect last weekend; I'm now going to and coming home from work in the daylight!  Yahoo!  Iditarod is practically over, the snow is melting, and Michael said he saw the first skunk cabbage peeking out of the snow near the McNugget intersection the other day, seed catalogues fill my mailbox. The vernal equinox is this week, followed quickly by a full moon and Easter (probably one of the earliest in years).

And following spring break, the last 43 days of the school year pass like a runaway freight train.  Next thing you know, the four of us will be boarding the ferry on another multi-month journey to and through the Lower 48. We are planning on driving down to the Seattle area for Dorothy's wedding around summer solstice.  I think Michael is hoping that Michael's 95-year old grandpa will travel from Illinois to Washington with Bob and Kathy in their motor home or we will drive to Illinois after the wedding to visit with him.  We are hoping to visit with my brother, David, and his family, either in Ohio, or up in Wasilla (since it's just an extra 1.5 day drive from Illinois or Haines Junction, respectively).  David and his family are planning on being in Alaska this summer anyway, and my dad is trying to arrange a bit of a family reunion in Cordova, where we all lived in the early 60's.  

 The kids are doing well.  We had Becky's parent-teacher conference yesterday and collectively decided to move her on to kindergarten next fall.  Her preschool teacher will be moving to kindergarten with her, co-teaching with the autism specialist-special education teacher in a new reverse mainstream class in my building.  She will spend a good part of her day in that class, especially initially, but will join her regular classroom for part of the day.  It seems like a good placement.

Both kids are talking more and more; Michael and I both noted that our road trip will be different this summer, with four voices instead of two.  Becky and Michael play together well most of the time, with the exception of their tendency to hit, kick, push, poke and otherwise get physical with their sibling. Michael's most heartfelt recent complaint: Becky so mean!"  But they do chatter back and forth as Michael is approaching Becky's current oral language developmental level.

It was nice to take the day off.  Usually if I don't get going on laundry first thing Saturday morning, I'm regretting it by Sunday night, and definatly all week long as everyone's favorite clothes aren't available for wearing.  But, whoop-dee-doo!, I've got the whole week off, so we took the kids to the 4-H pony rides fundraiser,  a trip to the Scottish restaurant (codeword for McDonalds), and the whole family out for a romping around the yard until we got cold and came in for hot chocolate. 

Michael has another monthly column coming out this Wednesday, so I always brace myself for whatever his last minute writing inspiration might be (cameras sixty feet up in trees, trips to the emergency room, etc.).  Check back for that Wednesday.